Saturday, August 28, 2010

CSN Stores - Nesco Food Dehydrator Review

I was contacted back in July about becoming a preferred blogger for CSN stores and offered an opportunity to review one of their products.

I waited till we were home from our Canada trip, then perused through their many awesome stores before I settled on something that I thought had awesome bento potential. Believe it or not, it wasn't actually a bento set. It was this ...

Now CSN does sell a large variety of the Nesco/American Harvest Dehydrators, from the basic versions to the really really fancy ones, and all the accessories. My mom, who has her own dehydrator recommended them as well, but she was routing for the big square dehydrator.

But this one, my now-very-popular-with-F&B dehydrator, this one came with the fruit roll tray. This means that I can make my own fruit roll ups with it!

We've spent the last couple of weeks testing it out and dehydrating various items to see how it works. The homemade fruit roll ups? The kids love them. Even better, so does my husband which I was not expecting. They are so simple too, nothing more than pureeing fruits and spreading it on the tray. We've mixed some of ours with organic applesauce (just apples/water), which works great if you're low on whole fruits. Since they have gone over so well, I want to order a couple extra trays so we can make more at once. The dried fruits? I can't dehydrate them as fast as the kids can eat them. We're hoping to experiment with jerky soon, or at least some of us are (I'm not a fan of the realm of dried meats, but I'll play along, for now).

My experience with CSN has been great too. Ordering was simple with easy to follow directions. Shipping was free on my item, all items are marked if they are free shipping. I received an email telling me when my dehydrator would ship, then a second email when it did ship with a tracking number. It shipped and arrived on schedule and was packaged well to protect the machine. I would order them again, everything went smoothly.

As for my dehydrator, it is amazing, highly recommend!!!

Disclosure: I was provided with a $70 gift card to CSN Stores to order/pay for an item of my choice. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. No additional compensation was received.